Si Ma Lu’s Memorial Ceremony
On May 17, the Chinese Scholars’ Association held an online memorial service on the occasion of Mr. Sima’s death on March 28, 2021.
Sima Lu (formerly Ma Yi) joined the Communist Party of China in 1937 at the age of 18, became librarian of the Yan’an Anti-Japanese Military and Political University at the age of 19, and served as director of the Yan’an office of the Xinhua Daily at the age of 20. In his reminiscence article, he claimed that he was probably the earliest Maoist in China. In his early years, Mao Zedong conquered Sima Lu’s mind with his unique charm, and he even imitated Mao’s voice and recited Mao’s language, so much so that he was misidentified as a Hunanese several years after he left Yan’an.
However, Sima Lu came to his senses early. After witnessing the cruelty of the Party struggle in Yan’an, he fled the “revolutionary holy land” in 1943. He finally realized that the essence of Mao was the same as Qin Shi Huang, Zhang Xianzhong and Li Zicheng, “Mao Zedong had used countless people in his life, and was used by countless others before and after his death. His body was used by a part of him, and his soul was split up to be used by different people; such as Lin Biao, the Gang of Four with Deng, and even the rulers of China today.”
Chinese women’s rights chief Zhang Jing visited Sima Lu in New York in 2008 and sang for her “On the Songhua River,” “All day long, the price is in Guanei, wandering! Which year, which month, will I be able to return to my lovely hometown?”
Su Xiaokang, the chief writer of the TV film “River Elegy” and an exiled Chinese writer, called Sima Lu a prophet of exiles who has spent his life running away from the Chinese Communist Party, a demon, anomaly and freak in the recent history of mankind.
Su Xiaokang: “Sima Lu has been fleeing the Communist Party all his life, and he calls himself an orphan of the May Fourth Movement. He is a dissident of the most respectable age. He is the oldest qualified exile. He was the longest-writing anti-communist literary figure, the founder of the first anti-communist publication. He was a man of letters who had overtaken all the Yan’an literati.”
From Maoist to anti-communist, from doctrine to humanity
Sima Lu once said, “This party is a party that completely dictates the actions of its members by orders, a militarized party, a secret service party. Every member of the Party, without reservation and without return, obeyed the Party’s discipline. The basic policy of the Party was the four big words ‘kill and cross over’.”
The rolling red tide of the 1930s led to “how many demented children in the world, who have wasted their lives on deep love”. Pei Yiran, vice dean of the College of Humanities of Shanghai University of Finance and Economics and president of the Independent Chinese PEN Association, believes that Sima Lu had saved enough skills and capital to last a lifetime before he turned thirty; he followed his human instincts between instinct and doctrine, and went out and searched for his soul in a sea of red disasters glorifying Marxism-Leninism, achieving “a fortunate life in an unfortunate era He has achieved a “fortunate life in unfortunate times.
The former executive director of the Chinese Scholars Association, Chen Bukong, also said that if Mr. Sima had not quit the Chinese Communist Party in the 1940s, he might have ended up like Wang Shiwei because of his goodness and integrity during the Yan’an Rectification, or his head during the Anti-Rightist Movement or the Cultural Revolution.
Chen Bukong: “He had a lot of contact with the top echelons of the Communist Party and became an anti-communist historian. Given that the CCP buried its history and had no real history, Sima Lu’s record of the CCP’s history filled the gap between the contemporary and modern history of the CCP.”
Known as a “living dictionary of Chinese political figures,” Sima Lu has met Mao Zedong, Zhang Guotao, Wang Ming, Bo Gu, Liu Shaoqi, Zhang Wentian, Zhu De, Peng Dehuai, Zhou Enlai, Lin Biao, Chen Yun, Deng Xiaoping, Kang Sheng, Gao Gang, Pan Hannian, Wang Jiaxiang, Ke Qingshi, Dong Biwu, and others; among the Chinese democratic parties, he has met Zhang Bojun, Luo Longyi, Zhang Lan, Shen Shen Biao, and others. Among the Chinese Democrats, he met Zhang Bojun, Luo Longji, Zhang Lan, Shen Junru, Zhang Shenfu, Zhang Junmai and Liang Shuming; among the Kuomintang, he met Chiang Kai-shek, Chiang Ching-kuo and Chen Cheng, and also befriended Xu Fuguan and Lei Zhen. Several intellectuals of the Chinese Communist Party who later became talking heads, such as Wang Shiwei, Deng Tuo and Tian Jiaying, were close friends of Sima Lu during his time in Yan’an.
The posthumous portrait of Sima Lu at the memorial ceremony (courtesy of Wang Dan)
Sima Lu comments on the Chinese Communist Party: warlord, rogue, barbaric dictatorship
After leaving the mainland, Sima Lu published Eighteen Years of Struggle, The Essence of Chinese Communist Party History and Documents, A Biography of Qu Qubai, On the Peaceful Evolution of China, Contemporary Chinese Politics, Dreams of the Red Chamber and Political Figures, founded Prospect and hosted the journal Exploration before moving to the United States in 1983. In 1983, he moved to the United States. Among them, Eighteen Years of Struggle was hailed by historian Yu Ying-shi as “Eighteen Years of Struggle was read, and the biography of 10,000 anti-communists in Hong Kong”.
“He defined the Chinese Communist Party in three words: warlordism, rogueism and barbaric authoritarianism, which is the essence of the Chinese Communist Party. While ordinary scholars merely quote materials and state their sources, he not only quotes but also publishes the full text of the literature. I gained a lot from his magazine Outlook.” Jin Zhong, editor-in-chief of Open magazine, said that Sima Lu’s party history is written in a unique way and is extremely rich in documentary materials. In the 1980s, after Mao’s death, the Chinese Communist Party tried to acquire Sima Lu’s materials but was refused.
On his eightieth birthday in 1999, Sima Lu donated more than $10,000 from his family and friends to the founding fund of the Chinese Scholars Association. The current president, Wang Dan, is determined to continue to collect Sima Lu’s speeches and writings and to publish a collection of Sima Lu and Gao Yang’s writings; to organize academic and cultural and enlightenment activities like the China Forum, and to continue to promote the democratization process in China.
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